PCC Wall Calendar

The world urgently needs to find new ways to live peacefully in and with creation.

The church has a responsibility to pray, call and work for the end of the unjust violence being done against creation and seek to live in right relationship with it. The beautiful photographs of creation Presbyterians have submitted, some of which appear in this calendar, inspire us to act in fulfillment of our God-given mission to care for the world that God loved and for which Christ died.

Read the full introduction to the 2021 PCC Wall Calendar

God spoke and the wonder of creation emerged from chaos. The sun, moon and stars; streams, lakes and oceans; shells, rocks and mountains; fields, forests and plains; herons, moose and salmon; sage, goldenrod and trees; and finally, humans, created in God’s image, are spoken into life by Divine speech. All creatures great and small emerge from cosmic disorder and nothingness, and God blesses each day of creation by enjoying its goodness.

But where God creates and builds, humans tend towards undoing much of God’s creation and returning it to disorder and nothingness. God’s abundant love spills over into creation and we are called to care for the earth just as the Creator has cared, protected and enhanced the earth. However, we have decided to act in ways that have set the world on a course of destruction through denial, indifference, greed, cynicism and paralyzed hopelessness. In addition to being given the biblical mission to care for creation, Christians have been given by faith the courage and responsibility to name things honestly. These gifts uniquely position Christians to name the truth of what is happening to the world: not climate change or climate crisis, but climate violence.

We have heard and preached sermons that exhort us to be good stewards of God’s beloved creation. We have written and read reports. But knowing better has not meant that we have done better. The world urgently needs to find new ways to live peacefully in and with creation. In The Long-Legged House, Wendell Berry writes,

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”

The church has a responsibility to pray, call and work for the end of the unjust violence being done against creation and seek to live in right relationship with it. The beautiful photographs of creation Presbyterians have submitted, some of which appear in this calendar, inspire us to act in fulfillment of our God-given mission to care for the world that God loved and for which Christ died.

The Rev. Ian Ross-McDonald – General Secretary, The Life and Mission Agency